OPPENHEIMER : Tuesday 25th July 2023.

'OPPENHEIMER' which I saw at my local independent movie theatre this week is an MA15+ Rated American biographical war drama film Written, Co-Produced and Directed by Christopher Nolan, and is based on the 2005 biography 'American Prometheus' by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. Christopher Nolan's prior film making credits take in his debut with 'Following' in 1998 then 'Momento' in 2000, 'Insomnia' in 2002, 'Inception' in 2010, 'Interstellar' in 2014, 'Dunkirk' in 2017, 'Tenet' in 2020 with the 'Batman' trilogy in between time in 2005, 2008 and 2012. The film cost US$100M to produce, saw its World Premiere showcasing in Paris on 11th July, was released in the UK, the USA and here in Australia last week, has so far grossed US$242M and has garnered universal critical acclaim.

The film opens in 1926 with a dishevelled looking 22-year-old J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) who has trouble sleeping at night and grapples with homesickness and anxiety while studying under the British experimental physicist Patrick Blackett (James D'Arcy) at the Cavendish Laboratory in the University of Cambridge, England. Oppenheimer finds Blackett demanding and injects an apple he leaves on his desk with cyanide which visiting scientist Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh) almost bites into but not before Oppenheimer thrusts it out of his hand and into a waste bin. Oppenheimer completes his PhD in physics at the University of Gottingen in Germany, where he is introduced to Werner Heisenberg (Matthias Schweighofer). He returns to the US, in the hope of expanding quantum physics research, and starts teaching at the University of California, Berkeley and the California Institute of Technology. During this period, he meets Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), a member of the US Communist Party with whom he has an on-again off-again affair until her eventual suicide in 1944, and later his future wife Katherine 'Kitty' Puening (Emily Blunt), a biologist and ex-Communist whom Oppenheimer married in 1940 and with whom he has two children.

US Army General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon) enlists Oppenheimer to spearhead the Manhattan Project in order to develop an atomic bomb after Oppenheimer assures Groves that he has no communist sympathies. Oppenheimer, a Jew, is particularly focused on the Nazis and the very likely possibility that they have their own nuclear weapons programme underway, headed up by Werner Heisenberg. 

Oppenheimer recruits a scientific team that includes Edward Teller (Benny Safdie), Isidor Isaac Rabi (David Krumholtz) and David L. Hill (Rami Malek), to a purpose built town in the middle of nowhere at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to begin work on secretly creating the atomic bomb. During the development, Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein (Tom Conti) discuss how such a bomb could possibly trigger a chain reaction that has the potential to destroy the world. Oppenheimer also learns of a possible Soviet spy within his ranks who has potentially leaked the Manhattan Project's secretive intelligence data to the Russians.

When Germany surrenders in May 1945 some project scientists cast doubt over the bomb's continued importance. The bomb is completed and the initial 'Trinity' test is successfully conducted on 16th July 1945 just before the Potsdam Conference involving Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin which began on 17th July in Potsdam, Germany. US President Harry S. Truman (Gary Oldman) decides to drop atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August 1945 respectively forcing Japan's surrender and thrusting Oppenheimer into the public eye as the 'father of the atomic bomb'. Haunted by the immense destruction and suffering the bombs caused, Oppenheimer personally urges Truman to use restraint in developing even more powerful weapons, saying that he has 'blood on his hands'. Truman perceives Oppenheimer's anxiety as a weakness, and states that, as President, he alone bears responsibility for the bomb's use. Upon leaving the Oval Office feeling very dejected Truman says to his aide that he doesn't ever want to see that 'scientist crybaby again'. Oppenheimer continues feeling intense remorse.

Oppenheimer is outspoken, in government circles, about any further nuclear development, especially of the hydrogen bomb, positioning him against Teller. His steadfast opinions become a point of contention amid the escalating Cold War with the Soviet Union. Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jnr.), chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, has a personal beef against Oppenheimer for publicly dismissing his concerns over the export of radioisotopes and, as per Strauss' belief, badmouthing him to Einstein. 

At a four week kangaroo court hearing in 1954 intended to remove Oppenheimer from any and all political influence, and as largely cross examined by Roger Robb (Jason Clarke), Oppenheimer is betrayed by Teller's and other associates' testimony, including the final nail in the coffin delivered by William L. Borden (David Dastmalchian),stating that he firmly believed that J. Robert Oppenheimer was an agent of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile Strauss exploits Oppenheimer's associations with current and former communists such as Tatlock and Oppenheimer's brother Frank (Dylan Arnold).

Despite Rabi and several other allies testifying in Oppenheimer's defence, Oppenheimer's security clearance is revoked by a vote of 2 -1 although his loyalty to the United States was not brought into question. However, this did damage his public image and reduced to zero his policy influence. Later, at Strauss' Senate confirmation hearing as Secretary of Commerce, Hill exposes Strauss' personal motives in engineering Oppenheimer's downfall, which results in Strauss' confirmation being denied.

In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson presents Oppenheimer the Enrico Fermi Award (awarded to honour scientists of international stature for their lifetime achievement in the development, use, or production of energy) as a gesture of political rehabilitation. It is revealed that Oppenheimer and Einstein's earlier conversation was not about Strauss but rather nuclear weapons and their far-reaching impacts ultimately. Oppenheimer muses whether the Trinity test, to a large extent, his creation, could launch a chain reaction of events that could lead to a nuclear holocaust. 

'Oppenheimer' is possibly Christopher Nolan's best film offering yet, and that's saying something given the quality of his varied back catalogue over the past twenty or so years. Here he has crafted a film that is well scripted, stunningly photographed, and packed with emotion, intrigue, a stellar ensemble cast and an underlying message that is just as important today as it was almost eighty years ago. Cillian Murphy gives a tour-de-force performance as the torn and troubled Oppenheimer wrestling with his own inner demons over the magnitude of his creation and the implications for all of humankind, and is more than ably supported by Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Robert Downey Jnr. This is a compelling film that tells the story of war, the people wielding the power and who you can ultimately trust that needs to be viewed on the biggest screen you can get to. It deserves all the accolades bestowed upon it come awards season, and despite it being largely a dialogue driven drama grips the attention from the get go, until the final half hour where the story drags just a little - but don't let that put you off. One of the must see films of the year for sure. Also starring Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Dane DeHaan, Matthew Modine, Scott Grimes, Alden Ehrenreich, James Remar and Olivia Thirlby.

'Oppenheimer' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

THE BOOGEYMAN : Tuesday 6th June 2023.

I saw the MA15+ Rated 'THE BOOGEYMAN' at my local multiplex this week and this American supernatural horror film is Directed by Rob Savage whose three previous feature film credits are 'Strings' in 2012, 'Host' in 2020 and 'Dashcam' in 2021. This film is based on the 1973 short story of the same name written by Stephen King and cost US$35M to produce, has so far grossed US$24M and has garnered mixed reviews from critics, having been released in the US and here in Australia last week.

Here then, high school student Sadie Harper (Sophie Thatcher) and her younger sister Sawyer (Vivien Lyra Blair) are reeling from the recent death of their mother who died tragically in a car accident. Sawyer suffers from nightmares and seemingly has visions of a monster living in her closet, and Sadie is struggling to adapt back into school life where her friend Bethany (Madison Hu) has joined in with a new group of girls who treat Sadie with disdain, and offer up little sympathy over the recent passing of her mother. Neither of them are getting much support from their father Will (Chris Messina), a therapist who is dealing with his own pain. 

One day, Will is visited at his home therapy office by a man called Lester Billings (David Dastmalchian) who asks to speak to him. Lester is insistent and as Will has a spare hour in his diary he reluctantly agrees. He goes on to explain that his three children have died, all killed one by one by an entity that he thinks has now latched onto him. Lester was never accused of the crime of murder, but in the court of public opinion he is guilty of murdering them. Although sympathetic to Lester, a disbelieving Will leaves him alone to call the Police. Lester slips away into the house and when Sadie is alerted to a shuffling sound in her mothers home art studio she goes to investigate, only to find Lester's lifeless body hanging from a coat hook on the back of the door.

Attempting to get their lives back to some sense of normality following the death of Billings, Sadie notices a strange black mould beginning to form above her bed, while Sawyer one night is woken by a mysterious creature that has hidden under her bed. Sawyer tells Sadie, who searches her bedroom but cannot locate the creature and does not believe her sister. The girls later visit their therapist Dr. Weller (LisaGay Hamilton) to talk about their mother's death. Weller uses a red light which flashes intermittently to help Sawyer get over her fear of the dark, but Sawyer observes the creature again when the room is thrust into darkness and the light flashes red and wets herself in fright. In the house, the creature continues to stalk and terrorise Sawyer while Sadie also glimpses it and begins to suspect the strange phenomenon is somehow linked to Lester's apparent suicide.

Sadie listens to her fathers recording of Lester's appointment and goes online to acquaint herself with the Billings family history and learns of their address. Sadie has Bethany drive her out to the Billings' now heavily vandalised and seemingly abandoned house. Inside she comes across Rita (Marin Ireland), Lester's estranged wife, who still lives in the house. Rita identifies the creature as 'The Boogeyman', stating it as the source of her children's deaths. She further tells Sadie that the creature feeds off fear and enjoys toying with its prey and that it can also mimic voices. The only way to ward off the Boogeyman is light. While talking to Sadie, Rita seemingly observes the Boogeyman approaching Sadie from behind. She warns Sadie not to move and to remain perfectly still, as she shoots at it with a shotgun, resulting in a disturbed Sadie fleeing the house.

The black mould continues its spread around the house. Later Sadie is alerted to strange noises coming from her mothers art studio. She gingerly enters in, only for Will to appear carrying a box of his wife's belongings which he was about to discard. Will and Sadie attempt to talk about the death of Sadie's mother with her convincing Will not to clear out the studio. Sadie takes the box down to the basement and begins to go through the contents of it, and other boxes too, writing 'keep' on each box. Whilst there Sadie seemingly encounters the spirit of her mother, directing the flame of an old Zippo lighter. At school, Bethany comforts Sadie following the episode at the Billings house, and decides to organise a girl's night at Sadie's house to cheer her up. While smoking a joint, Sadie almost chokes and runs through to the bathroom where she coughs up a tooth attached to a long piece of strings that Sawyer had lost shortly after the Boogeyman appeared. As a prank, Bethany's friends lock Sadie in the art studio closet, where she comes face to face with the Boogeyman. Banging on the door frantically to be let out, it remains tightly locked shut and then suddenly bursts open. A fight breaks out amongst the girls who all leave Sadie's house, angered by Sadie's reaction. Meanwhile, Sawyer is playing her PlayStation downstairs and is attacked by the creature and thrown into the TV, hospitalising her.

At the hospital, Sadie is comforting Sawyer, while Will is in a private room where they brought his wife to be identified after the car accident. Sadie is contacted by Rita, who believes she has devised a plan to kill the Boogeyman. Sadie arrives at the house where Rita has set up a trap with several shotgun shells and trip wires. She suddenly attacks Sadie, planning to use her as bait for the creature by tying her to exposed wall joists with cable ties. The Boogeyman appears setting off multiple traps and being shot several times. Rita sidles up to the apparent corpse and fires two more rounds into it for good measure. With her back turned to release Sadie, the Boogeyman rises and kills Rita. Sadie escapes falling down the stairs with the Boogeyman in pursuit but she shines a bright light on it and it retreats from whence it came. Sadie flees the house. Will calls her asking where she is, and Sadie realises they're already back home. The Boogeyman attacks Will and Sawyer, dragging them into the house. Sadie arrives and finds a hiding Sawyer, who has wrapped herself in green and red flashing Christmas lights, who says the creature took their father down into the basement.

The sisters go down into the basement with Sadie carrying an ice hockey stick for protection. There they find the creature seemingly feeding off Will. They rescue their father and a chase ensues in the basement. With the help of Sawyer and her mother's spirit, Sadie manages to set the creature on fire, seemingly killing it and destroying the black mould through the house. The three manage to escape the house as the flames take hold, engulfing the entire property. Some time after having moved on from their harrowing experience, Will, Sadie and Sawyer have a group session with Weller. As they leave, Sadie is called back to the office by Weller only to discover she isn't there and the closet door is open. Weller appears and questions Sadie, who looks at Weller suspiciously and shuts the door.

'The Boogeyman' is a reasonably well crafted albeit fairly pedestrian horror film that isn't up there with some of Stephen King's more noteworthy horror movie adaptations including 1976's 'Carrie', 1980's 'The Sining', 1983's 'The Dead Zone', 1990's 'Misery' or 2017's 'It', but it also doesn't lurk down in the depth's of some of the also rans that have peppered our cinema screens in the last forty or so years. There are a handful of jump scares, the lighting adds a sense of foreboding, the atmospherics add up to the feeling of dread and fear, and the performances of Thatcher and Blair especially carry this film firmly on their shoulders. But, the story adds nothing new to the genre that we haven't seen countless times before, and when The Boogeyman is finally revealed in the basement, the monster is nothing short of a rip-off of Ridley Scott's 'Alien'. This film is aimed squarely at a teen audience looking for by the numbers thrills and chills and on that note the film delivers, but for the more experienced long-in-the-tooth movie goer, this is an OK horror offering, but not great.

'The Boogeyman' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a potential five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-

ANT-MAN AND THE WASP : QUANTUMANIA - Tuesday 21st February 2023.

I saw 'ANT-MAN AND THE WASP : QUANTUMANIA' this week, and this M-Rated American superhero film is based on the Marvel Comics characters of Scott Lang (aka Ant-Man) and Hope van Dyne (aka The Wasp) and is the direct sequel to 2015's 'Ant-Man' and 2018's 'Ant-Man and The Wasp', is the 31st entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the lunching film of Phase Five of the MCU. As with the two previous films, Peyton Reed returns as Director for this third instalment. The film saw its Premier screening in Los Angeles on the 6th February, before its worldwide release last week, having gained mixed Reviews from critics, although it has so far earned US$288M off the back of a production budget of US$200M, making it the third highest grossing film of 2023 so far. 

The film begins with the back story of Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) trapped for some thirty years in the Quantum Realm, where one day she encounters Kang (Jonathan Majors) an exiled traveller who crash lands his craft, and who explains that they can both escape from the Realm if she helps him repair the Multiversal Power Core that is necessary for him to leave and for Janet to return to Earth to be reunited with her daughter. After many attempts to repair it have failed they one day have success but as Janet plugs in the power core she sees a vision of Kang conquering and destroying entire timelines. Kang reveals he was exiled by his own variants out of fear, which leads Janet to turn on him. Outmatched, Janet uses her Pym Particles to enlarge the Power Core and therefore render it useless.

Back in the present day and following the Battle of Earth, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) has become a successful memoirist having penned a best selling autobiography titled 'Look Out For The Little Guy' which charts his adventures with The Avengers, and has been living happily with his girlfriend, Hope van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly). Scott's now-teenage daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) has become a political activist, resulting in her doing jail time before being bailed out by her father. While visiting Hope's parents, Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) and Janet, Cassie reveals that she has been working on a mechanism that can establish a link to the Quantum Realm. 

When demonstrating how the device works, Janet panics and shuts it down, but contact had already been established so opening up a portal which sucks Janet, Hank, Cassie, Hope and Scott down into the Quantum Realm. Scott and Cassie land together and are found by natives who are rebelling against their ruler, while Hope, Janet, and Hank land in close proximity elsewhere and set off to a sprawling city to find Scott and Cassie. 

Hope, Janet, and Hank meet with Lord Krylar (Bill Murray), a former close friend of Janet's, who explains that things have changed since she left, and that he now answers to Kang, who is now the Realm's ruler. The three are forced to flee and steal Krylar's ship. The Langs, meanwhile, are told by rebel leader Jentorra (Katy O'Brian) that Janet's involvement with Kang is indirectly responsible for his rise to power. The rebels soon come under attack by Kang's forces led by M.O.D.O.K. (Mechanised Organism Designed Only for Killing), who is revealed to be Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), having survived his apparent death at Scott's hands when he was unevenly shrunken to subatomic size in the Quantum Realm and became a mutated, cybernetically enhanced individual with an oversized head. 

Scott and Cassie are taken to Kang, who has them detained in cells. He demands that Scott helps get his power core back and restore it to its normal workable size or else he will kill Cassie. Scott is taken to the core's location and shrinks down. Once inside he is overwhelmed by a mass of variants of himself, but Hope arrives and helps him gain the power core and using several Pym Particles reduces it in size. Kang, surprise surprise, reneges on his deal with Scott, and captures Janet and destroys her ship with Hank on it. 

After being rescued by his ants, who were also pulled into the Quantum Realm, they evolved rapidly, and became hyper-intelligent, Hank helps Scott and Hope as they make their way to Kang, aided in vast numbers by an army of ants, and Scott who has grown to an enormous size that he towers over Kang's domain. Cassie rescues Jentorra and they begin an offensive uprising against Kang and his army. During the fight, Cassie convinces Cross to turn sides and fight Kang, though he sacrifices his own life in the process.

Janet is able to fix the power core as she, Hank, Hope, and Cassie jump through a portal home, but Kang appears before Scott is able to make the jump and attacks him nearly beating him into submission. Hope returns and, together with Scott, destroy the power core and knock Kang into it, causing him to be pulled into oblivion. Cassie reopens the portal at her end for Scott and Hope to return home. As Scott happily resumes his life, he begins to rethink what he was told about Kang's death being the start of something terrible happening, but quickly dismisses the notion as he joins the family to celebrate Cassie's unbirthday at a restaurant, making up for all her birthday's that Scott missed. Remember to remain in your seat for the customary mid-credits and end credits sequences. 

'Ant-Man and The Wasp : Quantumania' is everything you have come to expect from a big budget, big spectacle MCU offering, with its heavy handed use of CGI to build a world and all the fantastical creatures and structures contained within it, to its use of A-list acting talent to give the film gravitas, to the introduction of a new cosmic villain that we are likely to see across multiple MCU films into the future in Kang the Conqueror all wrapped up with Scott Lang's quirky and not too serious take on his world and his new found place as an Avenger. All of that said, there is so much seemingly endless spectacle on screen here, that at times it's difficult to keep track of exactly what is going on. The story is also pedestrian and predictable and the plot is thin on the ground and seems to serve no other purpose than to introduce us to a new super villain and establish the next phase of the MCU. However, at a lean 123 minutes running time it doesn't outstay its welcome.

'Ant-Man and The Wasp : Quantumania' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-